On Friday the 13th I wasn’t unlucky at all. I felt privileged. I was at Ocean club in Hackney for a gathering of some of the top acts of the UK hip-hop scene, to join in unison with like minded dudes and dudettes against the evils of Tony Blair and George Bush. First on stage in the nicely sized main room was GM Baby, along with the live band United Vibrations. It was a standard run through of their most (if not only) well known tracks including ‘L.O.V.E’ and ‘Revolution’. Lot’s of spaced out dancing and some really awesome trumpeting. The female vocalist was pretty dressed for the occasion too! Then came what most of the crowd had been waiting for. That was obvious when he was taken off stage by a time obsessed organizer. Jehst shook things up with some older tracks and the leading gems from his album ‘Falling Down’. Mic and deck trouble aside, the set was storming. The crowd were now awake and hungry for some more quality hip-hop. That came in the form of Blade (who raps more words in a line than some seem to in a verse), Skinny man who earlier in the day had a run in (or run away) with the police, Phi-Life Cypher who laid down some brilliant off the top of the dome gems and TaskForce (who didn’t say anything controversially beefy which I had hoped for). The loved up hippies need to do events like this more often. Perhaps a bit earlier on in the night so I’m not still on night buses at seven Am though…